The song that caused Lou Reed to leave The Velvet Underground
It was make-or-break time for The Velvet Underground. After half a decade of existence, the New York art-punk pioneers spearheaded a brand new genre of music while pushing the boundaries of culture in tandem with one-time manager Andy Warhol. But by 1970, Warhol was out of the picture, as was bassist/viola player John Cale. Lou Reed took full creative control of the band and pushed them to create more straightforward rock material.
The band’s 1969 self-titled album showed that the Velvets were more than capable of creating traditional songs with pop hooks. Reed wanted to double down with the follow-up: an album loaded with hits. Atlantic Records requested the same, and so the group went into the studio to redefine the sound of the band. Drummer Maureen Tucker was on maternity leave, while guitarist Sterling Morrison spent time attending college courses.
That left Reed and bassist Doug Yule. Reed took the lead in songwriting, but Yule became the other major contributor to the band. In addition to stepping in for Tucker on drums, Yule also performed guitar and keyboard parts on top of his standard bass contributions. Yule even got the opportunity to sing on four of the album’s ten tracks, including ‘Who Loves the Sun’, ‘New Age’, ‘Lonesome Cowboy Bill’, and album closer ‘Oh! Sweet Nothin’.
‘Who Loves the Sun’ and ‘Oh! Sweet Nothin’ appeared as a promotional single, but Reed’s ‘Sweet Jane’ was always angled as the album’s main pop hit. However, when it came time to edit the song for a potential single release, Reed kicked back at the decision to cut his “heavenly wine and roses” bridge. It’s not exactly certain who made the decision to edit the song, but on the original version of Loaded, the bridge was left out of the mix.
Interestingly enough, Yule insists that it was Reed himself who made the decision to edit the song. “He edited it,” Yule claimed years later. “You have to understand at the time, the motivation was… Lou was, and all of us were, intent on one thing, and that was to be successful and what you had to do to be successful in music was you had to have a hit, and a hit had to be uptempo, short, and with no digressions, straight ahead basically, you wanted a hook and something to feed the hook and that was it.”
“’Sweet Jane’ was arranged just exactly the way it is on the original Loaded release exactly for that reason—to be a hit!” Yule adds. “’Who Loves The Sun’ was done exactly that way for that reason—to be a hit.”
Yule’s insistence seems to check out with Reed’s performances of the song after he left The Velvet Underground. Initially, Reed would perform ‘Sweet Jane’ with the bridge intact, but during the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal era, he would usually leave it out on his own accord. He would later reintroduce the bridge section. Since the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See, ‘Sweet Jane’ has routinely been restored to its original mix.
Check out the full-length version of ‘Sweet Jane’ down below.
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